Question

I have an html.erb file that does not render anything when the following is used:

<% form_for :profile do |form| %>

when this is used (note the “=” sign):

<%= form_for :profile do |form| %>

this is the output of the html:

Partial html code:

<%= form_for :profile do |form| %>

<%= text_field_for form, "first_name" %>
<%= text_field_for form, "last_name" %>
<div class="form_row">
    <label for="gender">Gender:</label>
    <%= radio_button :profile, :gender, "Male" %> Male
    <%= radio_button :profile, :gender, "Female" %> Female
</div>
<div class="form_row">
    <label for="birthdate">Birthdate:</label>
    <%= date_select :profile, :birthdate,
                    :start_year => Profile::START_YEAR,
                    :end_year => Time.now.year,
                    :include_blank => true,
                    :order => [:month, :day, :year] %>
</div>

Form_for definition:

def text_field_for(form, field,
                  size=HTML_TEXT_FIELD_SIZE,
                  maxlength=DB_STRING_MAX_LENGTH)
 label = content_tag("label", "#{field.humanize}:", :for => field)
 form_field = form.text_field field, :size => size, :maxlength => maxlength
 content_tag("div", "#{label} #{form_field}", :class => "form_row")
end    

Part of controller:

def edit
 @user = current_user
 @user.profile ||= Profile.new
 @profile = @user.profile
 if param_posted?(:profile)
   if @user.profile.update_attributes(params[:profile])
    flash[:notice] = "Changes saved."
    redirect_to :controller => "users", :action => "index"
   end
  end
end

Answer 1

In your text_field_for helper you need to declare that the string passed as the content of your DIV tag generated by your helper is safe, and thus should not be sanitized. This is done with html_safe.

def text_field_for(form, field,
  size =HTML_TEXT_FIELD_SIZE,
  maxlength =DB_STRING_MAX_LENGTH)
  label = content_tag("label", "#{field.humanize}:", :for => field)
  form_field = form.text_field field, :size => size, :maxlength => maxlength
  content_tag("div", "#{label} #{form_field}".html_safe, :class => "form_row")
end